#3 Summer of Grief — Tables of Grief
On July 3rd, 2019, my grandmother passed away — the woman who taught me the wisdoms of life. Today, I found myself thinking of her, and I wondered why the grief didn’t feel heavier than usual. Is it that sorrow fades over the years? Or do we simply learn to turn away from it?
I didn’t feel sad, not in the usual sense. I was mourning, yes — but not with sadness. It felt more like something gentle, even positive. I thought of who she was: how she savored every moment, how she wanted me to be happy, to know love, to feel at home wherever I was in the world, no matter the distance between us. Her absence is a sorrow for someone no longer here, but grief can soften into something tender — something that keeps us alive. As if even those who are no longer with us still give us the strength to embrace life.
Sometimes I wonder how she would look at me now, at the woman I’ve become, at the choices I’ve made, the loves I’ve lost and the loves I’ve found. In some quiet way, she always knew I would find my way. She would gently push back against my grandfather and father, both of whom dismissed my studies — philosophy — as clouds without substance. “But what will you do with philosophy?” my grandfather would ask, half mocking.
It was my grandmother who saw beyond utility, who believed I was exactly where I needed to be — that thinking about the world was not nothing, but everything. Something she herself had never been allowed: the freedom to become the woman she might have been, unshackled, unbeholden, beyond duty.
She was never famous. She left no grand legacy, no name etched in books or monuments. Yet her greatness lived in the nearness of things — in the intimacy of her presence, her children, her grandchildren. She asked only for one thing in life: that we all sit at the same table and eat. That was her dream. To gather people. To speak. To be. To love what is near, rather than chase the unreachable, the illusionary, the distant dreams that so often forget to hold our hand.
In her final years, the hardest thing for her was that she could no longer pull the table apart into three sections. “Most of the friends who once sat at this table are no longer here,” she told me, her voice heavy with sorrow. My grandfather echoed the sentiment: “We’re the last ones left. These past months, we’ve done nothing but go to funerals — tables of grief.”
The tables of joy grow smaller as we grow older. That truth never left me. Perhaps that’s why I long to fill my table, to keep chairs warm with laughter, to keep hands reaching for one another.
My grandmother left me a quiet inheritance: never to take things for granted, because what is dear, is fleeting — and therefore, infinitely precious.
